Kevin McNamara: Sox' 4th title run in 14 years a season for the ages

Kevin McNamara

Monday

Oct 29, 2018 at 10:09 PM

LOS ANGELES — Baseball seasons have a unique flow — win some, lose some and pray for no rain.

Baseball is the summer sporting soap opera, especially in New England, where the Boston Red Sox become the default daily topic of conversation at the coffee shop, the corner tap and beaches from Kennebunkport to Misquamicut.

LOS ANGELES — Baseball seasons have a unique flow — win some, lose some and pray for no rain.

Baseball is the summer sporting soap opera, especially in New England, where the Boston Red Sox become the default daily topic of conversation at the coffee shop, the corner tap and beaches from Kennebunkport to Misquamicut.

This Red Sox season, this 2018 championship season, offered Sox fans a glorious exception to baseball’s normal, confounding ways. This team captivated its fans from Opening Day (a frustrating 6-4 loss at Tampa Bay) to a special Sunday night at Dodger Stadium, when the last game of the season ended with what’s become a familiar scene of Red Sox players piling on top of one another and spraying champagne and beer.

“This never gets old,” said Xander Bogaerts, the 26-year old shortstop from Aruba who now has two World Series rings. “It’s amazing. I have more rings now than a lot of these guys in here.”

Besides an overpowering offense that led the major leagues in virtually every major category, what made this team special was its remarkable consistency. They showed up, played hard and found ways to win, day after day, night after night. At Fenway Park or in other hardball cathedrals around the country, these Red Sox won like no other team in the franchise’s long history.

Fast start

Despite their Opening Day loss, the Sox jumped out to one of their best-ever starts with 17 wins in the first 19 games. That was a harbinger of things to come.

“Since day one, when we came back from that [opening] road trip, you had a feeling that the city was going to fall in love with them,” said rookie manager Alex Cora. “We were down, we came back, and people started to recognize that, hey, man, they fight all the way to the end. And that's the way it should be.”

These relentless Red Sox took over first place on July 2, and by the All-Star break they were setting a historic pace (68-30). By that point, Mookie Betts was stirring up MVP numbers, pitchers Chris Sale and David Price were sailing along and newcomer J.D. Martinez supplied the needed thump in the middle of the batting order.

The only fly in the pie became what to do with Hanley Ramirez, a former power hitter who’d lost his juice. Cora didn’t see him as someone who’d accept a platoon role at first base, so the team cut him loose in late May — a decision many questioned at the time.

“When you have to make decisions, it's always tough,” Cora said. “Sending guys down, taking them out of the lineup. The Hanley situation, that was a tough one. It's not easy. It's always cool to give guys good news. But it's always tough to give guys bad news.”

But the loss of Ramirez's bat wouldn't derail the Sox. Instead, Mitch Moreland stepped into a full-time role at first base and earned the first All-Star nod of his career.

Midseason help

In the front office, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski didn't address the weakness that most fans griped about — Boston's shaky bullpen. Reliever Carson Smith was lost for the season after throwing his glove in frustration and hurting his shoulder. And Tyler Thornberg never became the reliable reliever Boston's brass had hoped for. By the trade deadline, rather than a bona fide bullpen arm, Dombrowski added a right-handed bat — Steve Pearce — and another starting pitcher — Nathan Eovaldi.

Neither move qualified as a blockbuster deal, yet both played starring roles in October, with Pearce winning the World Series MVP award.

The only real hiccup on the field, the only moment where the naysayers enjoyed their morning coffee, occurred in late August. First came a three-game losing streak with two of the losses to a playoff team, the Cleveland Indians. After two wins came three more defeats, all on the road in Tampa.

Six losses in eight games lowered Boston’s division lead over the hated Yankees to six games and sparked bubbles of discontent. Why aren’t the Sox hitting? They’re feasting on an unusual number of hideous teams and can’t beat the good ones. Does Joe Kelly really need to ever pitch again?

But those concerns became nothing more than a speed bump along the road.

The Yankees had problems of their own and never could get closer than six games from the lead. The Red Sox would win a record 108 regular-season games and storm into the playoffs as clear favorites to win the World Series.

Sox-tober

October is baseball’s month of memories, the time when players become legends. Those are the games to shake bad reputations and establish new ones.

That’s just what happened for so many Red Sox, and no one more so than Price, the team’s highest-paid ($30 million a season) player. Despite a superb career, the fact that the 33-year-old had never won a playoff game haunted him. And his troubles against the archrival Yankees — including an 11-1 bombing in the Bronx in July, and then again in Game 2 of the American League Division Series at Fenway, a 6-2 loss in which he couldn't get out of the second inning — didn't make it any easier.

“It was tough, absolutely,” Price said. “To answer that question in spring training, over and over and over and over, and anytime it got to September, and then the playoffs. That’s tough.”

But when he took the ball again in the ALCS in Houston, he exorcised his demons and beat the Astros to punch Boston's ticket to the World Series. His good fortune continued against the Dodgers, first in a win in Game 2 at home. With the chance to close out the Dodgers in Game 5 in L.A., Cora gave the ball to Price once again. Once again he was superb, leading the Sox to an easy 5-1 win.

The victory capped an 11-3 playoff run, including seven wins in eight games away from Fenway. The 2018 Red Sox finished with 119 wins, the third-most ever recorded in baseball history, and clinched their fourth title since 2004.

In the celebration at Dodger Stadium, the vindicated Price couldn’t help but gloat in front of the media cynics who had stalked him at every turn.

“I hold all the cards now,” he said, “and that feels so good. That feels so good. I can't tell you how good it feels to hold that trump card. And you guys have had it for a long time. You've played that card extremely well. But you don't have it anymore, none of you do, and that feels really good.”

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